Every day has been different than what I had envisioned in my head. We have a nearly 6-year-old daughter, a 3-year-old son, and a 1-year-old son. But there is a large part of our family that is missing. ⁠

Our 3-year-old son is dead. Yes, I said the awful word; “Dead”. There is no candy coating a loss like this, no matter how awful it makes people feel, no matter how awful it makes me feel.⁠

Mason never got to experience life and that is a tragedy. In honor of his memory I am extending an olive branch to start a conversation about the boy who was loved more than life would allow, in hopes that you not only speak to me about my loss, but will speak to others who may be going through a similar circumstance; because let me tell you, I can almost guarantee they would like to talk. ⁠
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As uncomfortable it is for me to say something as awful as “my son is dead”, it would be way more uncomfortable to say nothing at all. ⁠
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I still love him, and want to talk about my son, Mason Grey Adam. If any of the details trigger you in any way, I will politely ask that you simply navigate away from this story with no judgements or hard feelings. Death is not an easy concept to tackle head on, but I will try my best. ⁠
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It was early 2017. This pregnancy was so much different than the first, but we always accounted it to having a boy. “You’re so grounded when you get out here” my wife, Amanda would joke after vomiting for the 40th day in a row. She was so sick, it felt like this pregnancy would never end. But it was going to be so worth it. I remember our daughter, B and I doing impressions of mommy barfing in the living room while she was in the bathroom. It was so common that we stopped even checking if she was ok.⁠
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“Of course she’s fine, isn’t sickness a good sign?” ⁠
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At the end of January, Amanda began experiencing unbearable pressure on her pelvis. She thought that if she didn’t squeeze her legs together, the baby was going to come out. ⁠
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That just didn’t seem right, so we took a trip to the hospital. ⁠

In the early hours of February 12th, Amanda went through a normal labour. Doctors gathered around, she had to push, just like anyone else. Her water broke all over my jeans. They offered an epidural. We asked the nurse what usually happens. She told us that the babies typically take their final breath upon arriving into the world, and that it would just be peaceful. She had never seen a baby take more than one breath.

Mason was born and he lived for an hour.

He breathed.

His heart beat for an hour.

We got to hold him and kiss him and love him. Our son was born, he was alive, he was loved more than you can imagine.

And then he was gone.

Unless you have gone through it, you will never know what it’s like to call a nurse into your hospital room because your baby is starting to go limp. You will never know what it’s like to have lived through the miracle of birth and then have to walk away from your baby.

Our first nurse was fantastic. She was loving and caring but then shift came change, and our next nurse was happy. I can’t even begin to explain the feeling you get when you have went through the most traumatic, damning moment in your life, and someone comes in acting chipper.

We couldn’t get out of the hospital soon enough.

We asked if we could leave, and they told me that before we could go that I would have to fill out some paperwork. They handed me a clipboard with two documents on it. The birth certificate followed by the death certificate.

They asked us where we would like his remains to be sent. We had to choose which funeral home we would like our hopes and dreams to be sent to.

They told us that they could get a photographer in to take pictures of our baby. I thought that this was an awful thing to offer but am I ever glad that we took them up on it. We proudly display those pictures in our house. Mason was here, and we have pictures to prove it. B knows who he is, and he is part of her life.

We got into the hospital, and a student doctor saw us shortly after we arrived. The nurse tried to keep us in good spirits and I almost believed her when she said, “it’s probably just a bladder infection”.

Amanda knew that she was wrong.

When they did an internal check, it was obvious that Amanda’s cervix was dilated. She was in labour. Now we would have to make a choice.

At 23 weeks pregnancy, the odds of survival were slim and even if the baby did survive, the chances of him thriving were even slimmer. They rambled off a bunch of facts and figures and told us that we would have a few minutes to make up our minds as to what we planned on doing.

Earlier that day, the biggest choice we needed to make was which flavour of milkshake we would order.

We couldn’t watch our baby suffer.

We had seen the stresses that a disabled child goes through. We didn’t want him to be in pain. We, in that moment, chose not to resuscitate. We called our families to come to the hospital; told them that we were going to lose our baby tonight. Had to justify our decision when they said, “but he could be alright, right?”.

We were about to go through hell.

And then, when we picked up his urns from the funeral home and brought him home, it still didn’t feel right.

We felt like we had to do something to honor our son, so Amanda and I each got memorial tattoos. Something else to make us feel close. They didn’t work.

Parenting a living child has its’ own struggles but learning to be a parent to a deceased child was not an easy undertaking. Though we went through this experience together, each of us had never felt more alone.

And it was like that for a long time.

A while after my birthday, we had a nice celebration of life with our families. We released balloons as gifts to our baby boy.

I like to think he got them.

I smiled through my tears.

Since then, we have good and bad days. I often think about which milestones Mason would be hitting if he was with us today, but I now realize that instead of the normal baby milestones he would experience, that WE are making progress towards our lives because of him.

Yearly, we have evolved to celebrate Mason multiple times and at multiple events. We have not always been supported in the ways that we choose to celebrate him, by friends, or even family. But we have learned that it doesn’t matter whether we receive their blessing; what matters is that we are comfortable with how we choose to celebrate him.

The next few days it felt like time stood still and rushed by at the same time. We broke the news to B that the baby was no longer in mommy’s tummy.

“Oh man!”

That was her response.

The brain of a two-year-old can be the best medicine.

She then spent a few minutes looking around the basement for him, before deciding that she could just catch him out of the sky and put him back into mommy’s heart. Little did she know he had never left.

Just days later, we moved into our new house. We hated it. We moved in under false pretenses. This wasn’t the home we had imagined. It was just a cold and empty shell, without our baby.

We spent hours waiting for a doctor to come and see us, and when they did, they told us it was nothing to worry about, just a normal part of pregnancy. So, we went home. It didn’t feel right, but we aren’t specialists in labour and delivery. Who were we to question what a doctor says?
Two weeks later, February 11th came. We went to the zoo and Peter’s Drive-In. We were having a big outing to tire B out, because she was going to have a sleepover at her Nana and Papa’s house that night while we pack up our old house. We dropped of B for her sleep over and went out for supper.

“Swiss Chalet”- we finally had a date night and chose to go to Swiss Chalet.

Neither of us were that starving anyways. We ate quickly and rushed home to start packing up our lives. The basement was going to be a big job and it would likely take most of the night.

One box in, and Amanda started bleeding. We called Health Link and couldn’t get through to them. We knew something was wrong, so we went to the hospital. The drive is really a blur. It felt endless though I think that I was following the traffic laws.

I can honestly say that Amanda and I are both better people because he came into our lives. Though we went through darkness we have risen together to be stronger than we could have ever imagined.

When Mason died, we thought that we had lost our hopes, our dreams, and our future, but we now know that as he survives in our family, that these things have simply changed shape into visions that we had never imagined.

Never in my life did I imagine that the brief life of one little boy could make me care more about those around me, to not take situations for granted, to enjoy the small stuff. Never in my life did I imagine that I could feel the level of empathy for others that I do now.

Mason has inspired us to be the people that we didn’t know we wanted to be. He will always be the part of our lives that we were missing.

Even though he is not physically with us, he will forever guide our days. He has brought us into situations that we may have been uncomfortable doing in the past but has shown us that we are strong and can do them.

Not a day goes by that we don’t miss him, or wish we could watch him grow, but we try our best to grow for him.

We have gone to support groups and counselling, and a common theme among parents who have lost is this: “talk about our children, they will always be our children. Don’t be afraid to use their names or ask us the hard questions. If it looks as though we are doing ok, we have put in a lot of work to get to that point. If you think you are “reminding us” of the awful things that we have went through, you need to understand that we are thinking of them every moment of every day.”

Sometimes, I still cry in my car.

I have cried at a concert.

I am not ever going to be whole.

But I will continue to champion my family. Every day, I grow with my three children, even if one isn’t with me.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you know that I appreciate it and I hope you feel the love in my heart.
– Lee

Thank you Lee for sharing your story with our community. #Sharingmystoryofloss